


To the Ends of the Earth

by snowshus



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 07:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: By the end of summer they've saved enough





	To the Ends of the Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celaenos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/gifts).

By the beginning of the next summer they'd saved enough to make it all the way to California. Steve's car is worn down and dented from all the monsters but it still works. Indiana to Los Angeles is a long way to go for a little fresh air, but every day the town had constricted a little more around them. Robin has dreams, she has goals and she isn't going to die horribly in a backwards little town on top of a hole in the fabric of reality. She's going to play her music. She's going to be great. She just needs to be somewhere that will let her.

Steve just wants come along. He says it's because she shouldn't go alone, out into the dangerous world and big scary city. Robin wouldn't have left him behind anyways. He's pretty helpless with out her. She's pretty lonely without him. Besides, they'd swiped his dad's credit card to pay for the first leg-rich friends can be nice to have. 

The forested hills of their home state give way to the grasslands of Kansas, and wheat as far as the eye can see. They sleep under the open sky and there are more stars then Robin had ever imagined. Steve tells her all about them, about the different colors and what they mean and which clusters are the constellations and how to tell which way is north. When she asks how he knows all this, he laughs and says Dustin never shuts up. 

The flats get rougher and hillier and soon they're climbing up and up into the sky itself where the snow never melts. The car almost doesn't make it up the pass outside of Denver. Robin grabs the door handle well swearing they just rolled backwards and Steve yells about how it's totally fine, everything is fine, they're going to be fine. 

They stop in the Garden of the Gods. Under trees that never lose their leaves, they talk about who they will be when they are finally free. They drink too much and don't eat enough and giggle loudly at the moon that drifts across the sky. They talk about girls, about Tammy and Nancy and Nancy's hot mom. As the moon starts to set behind the red rocks and sleep is slurring their words more then the alcohol Steve admits he wouldn't have minded sharing Nancy with Jonathon, and does mean there's something wrong with him, if he didn't want her all to himself? What about if he wouldn't have minded being shared with Jonathon too?

Robin doesn't know. It's odd to her, the idea of not minding the person she loves loving someone else. She wouldn't have been happy to share Tammy with Steve and she loves him as much as she's ever loved anyone. But she's something wrong to so many people out there and she's pretty sure it's the same basic thing. People feel the way they do, they love who and how they do and if they're wrong she doesn't want to be right. She wouldn't want Steve to be right either. 

There is a desert between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada's and it's hot and stretches on for what feels like eternity. They have to stop at every little town to fill up as many containers of water and gas as they can and every few dozen miles they stop for an hour and pour more water into the engine to make sure it doesn't over heat. Sweat slicks down Steve's hair and plasters Robin's to her neck. In the far distance Las Vegas rises. They spend the night in glittering casinos, drinking cocktails with funny names. They win big and lose bigger and following the hidden signs to places where people like them don't have to hide. Girls flirt with Robin and boys dance with Steve. They don't find their way to a seedy motel bed until the sun is coming up. 

Impatience grips them when they wake up, only seven more hours to Los Angeles. The Sierras rise around them but it's not much compared to the breathtaking heights of the Rockies. They pass through the valleys, past shrubbery and Joshua trees, down the freeways that merge and split and merge again, down 405 and onto 10 and all the way to the edge of the world. The freeway dips into a tunnel and when they emerge the ocean stretches out in front of them. 

It's cooler here, cold enough that Robin grabs her sweater. They walk across the vast expanse of sand to where the waves roar and crash against the shore, running up to bubble over their shoes. The Pacific ocean is still bitterly cold from the winter and her toes prickle against the chill. Steve drapes an arm over her shoulder and she leans against him as they watch the sun go down on the water. They made it. 


End file.
